Trained by a Master House Rules
These rules apply only to characters with the Trained by a Master advantage. That means it only applies to Martial Artists or other archetypes with the Martial Artist Lens. For the purposes of these rules, such a character will be called a monk. Better Cinematic Skills The Cinematic chi skills (Breaking Blow, Flying Leap, Power Blow, and Zen Archery) are treated as unspecialized Imbuements. It is a non-action to use them, each use costs 1 fatigue, and the fatigue cost can be reduced by taking a -5 penalty on the roll. Power Blow or Breaking Blow can be used on defenses at 1/2 skill +3, like other Imbuements. Other cinematic skills have minor improvements, see below. Breaking Blow Normally, Breaking Blow can only be used on inanimate objects. Use Penetrating Strike against opponents. Breaking Blow can be combined with Penetrating Strike to make Homogeneous opponents Fragile, though, as long as the Penetrating Strike has an armor divisor of 5 or more. There are no material penalties for Breaking Blow. Invisibility Art Reduce the Prerequisites to Hypnotism and Stealth. Roll Invisibility Art once per foe, and only reroll if the conditions to spot you improve: someone else alerts the foe, or you move faster, or you enter an area of brighter light. A foe moving from a dimly lit area to a dark area and back to a dimly lit area has not had his conditions to spot you improve. Imbuement 2 for Free Trained by a Master includes Imbue 2 for free. All Imbuement skills are modified by the Monk's Chi Talent. Monks can buy Imbue 3 for 20 points. Defensive Imbuements Monks can use the Defensive Imbuements from Pyramid 3.4. Shattershot To avoid turning monks into artillery weapons, increase the fatigue cost of Shattershot to 1/2 the square of the fragmentation damage dice. As usual, Shattershot is limited to no more damage dice than the underlying attack, and the monk can reduce the fatigue cost by 1 by taking a -5 penalty on the roll. My Body is a Deadly Weapon A monk's unarmed attacks are considered weapons. They do not suffer damage from being parried by other, ordinary weapons, nor from hitting ordinary armors. They are still vulnerable to weapons with Destructive Parries, foes with Auras, or similar threats. A monk can choose to use his unarmed parries to damage unarmed attacks from non-monks, like any other weapon user. Incense and Sacred Rice Monks need incense, funky candles, sacred rice, and other exotic consumables to perform their ritualistic Disciplines of Faith. This stuff is cheap ($6/day) and light (0.2 lbs/day). A monk loses access to any Chi abilities - including his Chi talent! - 1 day after consuming the last of his exotic consumables. A monk may try to maintain his Chi without consumables. This takes an hour and a Meditation roll at +4 or an Autohypnosis roll. There is a cumulative -1 per day after the first without consumables. A monk who skips a number of days of consumables needs to make up the lost consumables before he considered to be on consumables again. :Example: Pearl loses her backup on the road, and goes for 3 days without consumables. She meditates to maintain her powers. When she gets back to town, she needs to spend an extra $18 to buy the consumables for the missed three days, or she'll still be unable to use her Chi powers when she leaves town. It costs a monk an extra $40 per week to live in Town. This expense cannot be avoided by living cheap, though a successful Scrounging roll cuts the cost to $20. Category:Saga of Westmarch